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To investigate how preschoolers acquire a tool use strategy and how they adapt their tool use to a changed situation, 2- to 4-year-olds were asked to retrieve chips from a transparent box with a rod, either by stabbing and lifting through a top opening or by pushing through a front and a back opening. In both conditions, about 40% of the children acquired effective tool use by individual learning, and 90% of the other children learned this by observing only one demonstration. When confronted with a changed situation (i.e., previous opening covered, alternative opening uncovered), children perseverated with the recently learned, but now ineffective tool use strategy. Neither age nor acquisition type of the first strategy affected preschoolers' perseverations. Results indicate that prior tool use experiences have differential effects in situations that require either transferring known functions to novel objects or using a familiar tool for an alternative purpose.
Honeybees, Apis mellifera, can differ considerably in their birth weights but the consequences of these weight differences for behaviour are unknown. I investigated how these birth weight differences affected their cognitive skills when the bees reached foraging age. Individual sucrose responsiveness measured by the proboscis extension response is a strong determinant of appetitive olfactory learning performance in honeybees. Most of the observed learning differences between individuals or between genetic bee strains correlate with differences in their sucrose responsiveness. My second aim was therefore to investigate whether the sucrose responsiveness of newly emerged bees could predict the learning behaviour of the bees 3 weeks later. Both birth weight and sucrose responsiveness measured at emergence could predict olfactory learning scores as demonstrated by significant positive correlations. Heavy bees and bees with high sucrose responsiveness later learned better than lighter individuals or bees with lower responsiveness to sucrose at emergence. These results demonstrate for the first time a fundamental relationship between sensory responsiveness and morphology at emergence and later cognitive skills in insects. Because sensory responsiveness is closely linked to division of labour in honeybees, differences in weight and sucrose responsiveness at emergence might be involved in regulating division of labour.
This article presents the design and a first pilot evaluation of the computer-based training program Calcularis for children with developmental dyscalculia (DD) or difficulties in learning mathematics. The program has been designed according to insights on the typical and atypical development of mathematical abilities. The learning process is supported through multimodal cues, which encode different properties of numbers. To offer optimal learning conditions, a user model completes the program and allows flexible adaptation to a child's individual learning and knowledge profile. Thirty-two children with difficulties in learning mathematics completed the 6-12-weeks computer training. The children played the game for 20 min per day for 5 days a week. The training effects were evaluated using neuropsychological tests. Generally, children benefited significantly from the training regarding number representation and arithmetic operations. Furthermore, children liked to play with the program and reported that the training improved their mathematical abilities.
When playing violent video games, aggressive actions are performed against the background of an originally neutral environment, and associations are formed between cues related to violence and contextual features. This experiment examined the hypothesis that neutral contextual features of a virtual environment become associated with aggressive meaning and acquire the function of primes for aggressive cognitions. Seventy-six participants were assigned to one of two violent video game conditions that varied in context (ship vs. city environment) or a control condition. Afterwards, they completed a Lexical Decision Task to measure the accessibility of aggressive cognitions in which they were primed either with ship-related or city-related words. As predicted, participants who had played the violent game in the ship environment had shorter reaction times for aggressive words following the ship primes than the city primes, whereas participants in the city condition responded faster to the aggressive words following the city primes compared to the ship primes. No parallel effect was observed for the non-aggressive targets. The findings indicate that the associations between violent and neutral cognitions learned during violent game play facilitate the accessibility of aggressive cognitions.
When playing violent video games, aggressive actions are performed against the background of an originally neutral environment, and associations are formed between cues related to violence and contextual features. This experiment examined the hypothesis that neutral contextual features of a virtual environment become associated with aggressive meaning and acquire the function of primes for aggressive cognitions. Seventy-six participants were assigned to one of two violent video game conditions that varied in context (ship vs. city environment) or a control condition. Afterwards, they completed a Lexical Decision Task to measure the accessibility of aggressive cognitions in which they were primed either with ship-related or city-related words. As predicted, participants who had played the violent game in the ship environment had shorter reaction times for aggressive words following the ship primes than the city primes, whereas participants in the city condition responded faster to the aggressive words following the city primes compared to the ship primes. No parallel effect was observed for the non-aggressive targets. The findings indicate that the associations between violent and neutral cognitions learned during violent game play facilitate the accessibility of aggressive cognitions.
Social networks are currently at the forefront of tools that
lend to Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). This study aimed to
observe how students perceived PLEs, what they believed were the
integral components of social presence when using Facebook as part
of a PLE, and to describe student’s preferences for types of interactions
when using Facebook as part of their PLE. This study used mixed
methods to analyze the perceptions of graduate and undergraduate
students on the use of social networks, more specifically Facebook as a
learning tool. Fifty surveys were returned representing a 65 % response
rate. Survey questions included both closed and open-ended questions.
Findings suggested that even though students rated themselves relatively
well in having requisite technology skills, and 94 % of students used
Facebook primarily for social use, they were hesitant to migrate these
skills to academic use because of concerns of privacy, believing that
other platforms could fulfil the same purpose, and by not seeing the
validity to use Facebook in establishing social presence. What lies
at odds with these beliefs is that when asked to identify strategies in
Facebook that enabled social presence to occur in academic work, the
majority of students identified strategies in five categories that lead to
social presence establishment on Facebook during their coursework.
This article provides some insights into the complex relationships between thinking and behavioral patterns, bio graphical aspects and teaching style. The data was analyzed in the Grounded Theory tradition and with the help of ATLAS.ti. The results presented here offer preliminary findings only since the research is still ongoing. The focus is on the ways teachers deal with mistakes. Based on two case examples, it will be shown how the fear of making mistakes can lead to teacher-centered lessons, and thereby limiting pupils' possibilities to learn autonomously.
Purpose: The acquisition of skills is essential to the conceptualization of cognitive-behavioural therapy. Yet, what experiences are encountered and what skills actually learned during therapy, and whether patients and therapists have concurrent views hereof, remains poorly understood.
Method: An explorative pilot study with semi-structured, corresponding interview guides was conducted. Pilot data from our outpatient unit were transcribed and content-analyzed following current guidelines.
Results: The responses of 18 participants (patients and their psychotherapists) were assigned to six main categories. Educational and cognitive aspects were mentioned most frequently and consistently by both groups. Having learned Behavioural alternatives attained the second highest agreement between perspectives.
Conclusions: Patients and therapists valued CBT as an opportunity to learn new skills, which is an important prerequisite also for the maintenance of therapeutic change. We discuss limitations to generalizability but also theoretical and therapy implications.
Purpose: The acquisition of skills is essential to the conceptualization of cognitive-behavioural therapy. Yet, what experiences are encountered and what skills actually learned during therapy, and whether patients and therapists have concurrent views hereof, remains poorly understood. Method: An explorative pilot study with semi-structured, corresponding interview guides was conducted. Pilot data from our outpatient unit were transcribed and content-analyzed following current guidelines. Results: The responses of 18 participants (patients and their psychotherapists) were assigned to six main categories. Educational and cognitive aspects were mentioned most frequently and consistently by both groups. Having learned Behavioural alternatives attained the second highest agreement between perspectives. Conclusions: Patients and therapists valued CBT as an opportunity to learn new skills, which is an important prerequisite also for the maintenance of therapeutic change. We discuss limitations to generalizability but also theoretical and therapy implications.